Feedback and strategic questions

[Mightypeon]

Hi there,

I wish to provide some feedback ask some strategic questions concerning the mod.

First, I really like the mod in general. The nations feel way closer to each other then before in terms of power, and I do like that the mod apperantly prefered to strengthen nations to top tier, rather then nerf the powerful nations.

I have now played 2 games somewhat more seriously, and wish to quickly describe them:

1: Bismark, continents, large, King.
A) I settled 5ish cities pretty quickly. Augustus declared war on me, which resulted in my taking all his stuff in the midgame and then vasallizing him. Front runners were Portugal (other continent) and Brazil. I went Progress + Statecraft. Went on a crusade against Genghis (goal was to free all of his 5 or so conquered city states, in order to get enough "anti warmonger" to conquer stuff I wanted to keep), actually did not manage to take his main stuff. Did note AI improvements regarding combat. Genghis did build up something approaching a world war one trenchline in the cannon+ tercio age, and we had a real "no mans land" between the lines.
Do different civs have different military AIs? Augustus went down like a Champ, while Genghis fought pretty smartly.

What worked: I got a massive production advantadge over everyone else, including Portugal. Problem is that she is on the other continent, and only 2 of my cities are on the coast while nearly all of hers are. Meaning that, despite my production advantadge, I am disadvantadged in building enough of a navy to overrun her.

What did not work:
Despite my Capital being a monster in terms of production, and despite my science being quite solid (never more then one or at most 2 techs behind the leader, I sometimes was leader), my fairly highish number of cities appears to inflate my social value costs and prevents me from building wonders, or meant that I lost the wonder race because other nations had a sizeable head start.

Second game: Russia, Large, continents, King.

Jungle/Forest start. went progress because I had some space, found out I didnt actually have much space because Siam was like, 20 tiles away. Waged an early Scout war vs. Siam nabbing 2 settlers and 2 workers for no loss of my own, then rapidly expanded towards 8 pretty drat good cities. Siam was surprisingly chill with it.

Problem: 4 out of 5 religions got founded on my continent. I have all 4 of them in my empire, and a "religious divisions" modifier in the mid teens (it fluctuates, may reach -20). I am not quite sure how I am supposed to fix it, given that I cant recruit inquisitors, and am apprantly not able to declare a state religion.
Also, Gustav Adolf is a jerk. Declared war on me, and then smuggled some great diplomats into my allied CS states, which then proceeded to make a total mess out of my trade routes etc. Augustus is also in this game, and is building up for a totally obvious sneak attack on me. Not very worried because the terrain is totally atrocius for him. Messed up relations with his CS allies will be annoying though.
Again, cant seem to get enough culture going to compete in wonder races.

Question:
How do I best deal with religious division?
How do I, when playing wide, get world wonders despite the high culture costs for having a wide empire?

 

[crdvis16]

For religious division:

Even if you don't found a religion of your own, shrines and temples are useful to build. Temples reduce unhappiness from religious division. You can also use your faith from those buildings to fully accept one of the religions that are trying to spread to your empire by making missionaries in a city that has that religion. You can either choose which religion to help spread based on which has the best beliefs for your situation or you can choose the religion that seems to be spreading the hardest since it will take the least amount of effort to accept. Once any individual city has almost all of its citizens following a single religion the unhappiness from religious division will be very low. Additionally, rationalism has a tenant that removes all religious unhappiness.

On the question of gaining policies when wide:

It's something I struggle with too. Every city you settle or annex increases policy costs by 15%. One choice you can make is to puppet more often than annex if you can do without controlling a conquered city's production. Puppeted cities do not increase policy acquisition cost. The other thing you can do is to make sure you are focusing on culture if you have plans to build any wonders. Put a higher priority on the culture line of buildings. Populate the culture specialist slots, especially Great Writers, and pop your Great Writers for the lump sum of culture. I'm personally of the opinion that the number of policies required for many of the mid and late game wonders is too high, but that might just be a symptom of my play style. After all that, you might just have to accept that going wide is equivalent to deciding you are not likely to get many of the mid and late game wonders. There are lots of benefits to being wide but one of the drawbacks is that wonder acquisition gets harder.

 

[Fragamemnon]

One thing of note-when you have big territory and no religion of your own, you need to A) be very careful about open borders and B) have enough faith piled up that you can mass-convert cities with some missionaires to a religion before they flip to other faiths. Rooting out heresy is a lot harder than converting cities with pantheons.

In the abstract, I agree that things like -5 due to religious divisions from one city is absurd for civilizations without a national religion adopted. There should be more curbs on how much local unhappiness is possible from religious divisions if you don't have a holy city. You can easily go from +7-+10 to nearly -10 in a big empire just from passive religion spread.

 

[jma22tb]

The big thing I'm noticing is you are settler spamming in both games. If you do that you need to leverage that tech bonus through Fraternity and the capital science / population into Writers' Guild ASAP. That's the biggest culture/turn boost of the early game, especially in combination with Amphitheater.

There is another way to use Progress, which is delays the settler spam a bit, but is more culturally viable.

* Pottery, the Wheel, Calendar as your start.
* Monument, Shrine, Council, Granary in your capital city. The growth rate and extra science / growth adds up fast, which makes for a scientific explosion and every tech you get gives culture.
* Go for Trade, Military Theory, and Construction after that while making a play for Pyramids to make up for your lack of expansion and constructing buildings for the additional culture.
* Once you reach the right side policies, every city you found after that and every building you construct faster than anyone else will be giving you culture.

Also, I find God of Commerce to be excellent for settler spamming to get religion. You're going to be connecting the cities anyway, so getting even more gold and faith per city is great. Especially for Russia, since you need a lot of gold to take advantage of the extra science they get from buying land.

 

[Mightypeon]

After some more games, my current opinion is that Indonesia is the best settler spam civilization.

One of their extra spawned resources is, with the monopoly bonus, a pretty monstrously productive tile. This effectively allows the second city, if it spawned that resource, to pump enough archers to steal someone elses workers.

On another note, I am experimenting with going the right side of progress first.

The extra culture helps a lot, then I follow it up with extra production (generally resulting in saved turns when going for workers or early buldings), and then I either finish the right side (depending on how many workers are around) or go down the left side finally.

It is kind of crumpy to get the worker last, but I typically have workers a long time before I get my 3rd police choice...

 

[Legen]

When playing wide with Progress, you should have a good strategy in mind that benefits from having multiple cities, instead of a strong core of cities (Tradition) or an early army (Authority). The increased cost of policies and techs, based on number of cities, is also an important factor to consider when playing wide. And you should take into account the civilization that you're playing with, since some have solid wide strategies that would normally compromise something in a wide gameplay. Two examples:


- The reworked Brazil can play wide to pursuit a religion around Apostolic Tradition founder belief, which grants golden age points whenever you spread your religion with a missionary. Wide has improved faith acquisition by the sheer number of shrines and temples you can get, so it helps you to found the religion that you want, and the usual policy acquisition penalty for having many cities is smaller than the extra culture you get from Brazilwood Camps and Carnivals (brazilian "We love the King day", grants an extra +20% culture output in the city).

- Japan has a +2 culture bonus on tiles with fishing boats, atolls, iron or horses, the latter two once you have a Dojo (japanese unique Armory) in the city. With that, you can go Progress, expand and conquer whenever you can find such resources with minimal impact on your social policy acquisition. Later in the game, all those extra culture tiles are useful for a Tourism victory due to Hotels/Airports/Stadiums and Historic Events (tourism based on your culture output), making expansion rewarding on its own.


I have the impression that you're not playing to your chosen civilizations' strength. Russia plays better for a wide science game with its UA/UB, instead of a wonder race, and you're probably better changing your core strategy around it when playing them.

And usually, more faith output means more followers in your city due to the ability to get more missionaries and inquisitors; that's how you usually deal with religious unrest, especially if you're struggling to build Wonders (Chichen Izta reduces religious unrest) and get enough culture for the Rationalism's Free Thought policy. Religion can also be tailored to be a good source of culture, so you may focus it when going wide, as you're able to have a higher faith output anyway.

 

[Mightypeon]

So, actually won as Indonesia on King around 1800.

What worked:
-I did grab the very usefull "more faith for connected cities" Pantheon, which got me a religion. Hilariously enough, I founded that religion pretty early, went for Stupas and something else that gave more faith and successfully converted most of my continent. Went with the "extra culture" enchances, and then basically got a new social policy every 10 turns. Going piety definitly helped as well.
-Indonesia is, because of the extra happiness from luxuries, really forgiving in terms of overexpansion. Keep about 2 military units per city and you can typically fend of invasions as well.
-Shaka and Attilla both attacked me, however, I had more production then both of them combined. Attilla actually raided quite competently, Shaka tried a frontal assault and got murderered quite effectively.
-Had 2 defensive wars vs. Shaka in which I failed to take land.
-Shaka, in the 14th hundreds, bribed attila to war against me once more. Was better prepared and crushed Shaka decisivly, puppetting his cities and vasallizing him. Left Attilla out with an admission of defeat since my warmonger penalty was getting highish.
-Explored, converted Rome (leader on the other continent, did not found a religion but was at war with the actual religion foudners) to my religion. Traded a lot with everyone (mostly my luxury resources), getting open borders in the process.
-Rushed quickly through Asceticism.
-Tourism victory was quite quickly. My capital generated about 100ish tourism per turn. I had open borders with everyone.

 

[jma22tb]

Yeah God of Commerce is no joke. All that gold makes everything easier doesn't it?